


The Waters of Devon (Colonel Colborne comes home)

by AlterEgon



Category: Napoleonic Era RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 12:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18571696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: This was planned to be the beginning of a longer fic, which is partially written but I probably won't upload in full. So please consider this just an extra closing chapter to Unmixable. And yeah, that was supposed to be the title of the full thing, without the bracketed part.





	The Waters of Devon (Colonel Colborne comes home)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidsamfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Unmixable](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092530) by [AlterEgon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon). 



Lieutenant-Colonel John Colborne was coming home.

The war was over and he was returning to his family. It should have been a joyful moment. After months of separation, he would finally see his wife, from whom he had had to part just a scant week after their wedding, again. His sisters, whom he hadn't seen for the same number of months, would be nearby. His stepmother would be happy to have him back as well.

Really, he should have been overjoyed to return. He was reasonably in one piece, the only bad wound he had suffered in this particular war had healed as much as it ever would, leaving him with a stiff shoulder but full use of the hand. It had been that wound that had given him the long stay in England at the end of which he had been wedded to his wife.

That same wound, though, had also given him something else.

The intense pain, maintained over weeks and months, had released his magic, previously shut away by an earlier wound, and given him the full scope of powers of a Water Master. Without adequate training available, he had muddled through and come out of it with good control over his new-found skills and new friends that were not precisely human. Nor precisely water.

Two of them floated in his wake now, a pair of phoenixes, so regal in their red-and-golden splendour that it was almost hard to believe that they couldn't be seen by those ungifted. A much smaller shape fluttered around him, a tiny woman made of wisps of air. He couldn't help but smile at her incessant chatter. So far, Sylphia found England most interesting. Colborne had never known how many ways there could be to describe the differences in the wind on an island from those on the continent where she had come into existence.

Some of his friends, both human and elemental, he had had to leave behind when he left the continent. That, while sad in itself, was not the reason why he failed to urge his horse onward in the same way he might have in a different lifetime.

He had grown used to the magic, its use, the little amenities it offered. He had grown used to conversing with his elementals – a matter of course, really, among the masters he had lived with in the army camp.

With his family, he would be forced to hide all of that. It wasn't just that he had heard tales of those with whom the knowledge of magic in the family did not sit well – and, his step-father having been in the clergy, he had every reason to assume that this would be the case in his own. He had met those without magic who knew about it and envied those who had it. There had been some unpleasant incidents. No, he would not reveal his magic to his family if he could help it at all.

He could only hope that reality would turn out to be easier than it was in his imagination.

 

He couldn’t ride any more slowly than he was and not draw attention– and potentially unpleasant questions – to himself,  and so it wasn't long before he rode into the yard in front of the manor his wife's family inhabited, but not before he had sent both the phoenixes and the air spirit away. None of them would stray far, but they would welcome the opportunity to explore the area around their new – albeit temporary – home, and it would be safer not to have them with him when he first arrived. All it would take was one servant with enough sensitivity to magic to spot them, and there would be questions he was not prepared to answer.

With her husband gone just a few days after the wedding, his wife had returned to live with her mother and assorted unmarried siblings and cousins in her uncle's household. The building, known by the name of Puslinch, was easily large enough to accommodate several branches of the family all at the same time and not be crowded.

Still, as everywhere, well-trained servants kept an eye on all things, and so Colborne had barely dismounted when someone appeared by his elbow, recognising him and urging him to go inside, assuring him that his horse would be taken care of, and his luggage brought to his and his wife's rooms when it came up in the carriage.

Feeling more lost than he had since he had first discovered his magic and the fact that no one in his regiment was skilled to teach him in its use, Colborne stepped through the large entrance door.

He found himself in a hall that he was well familiar with, having been a regular visitor to Puslinch when one or another of the local boys was courting, and then married to, first his oldest sister, and then his other sister. The third sister was also betrothed to a Yonge boy, while he himself had married one of their girls. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, benefitting everyone involved, including his wife-to-be Elizabeth and himself.

Now he found himself wishing that he had made a different decision then. If he had not proposed, his youngest sister might have had more trouble finding a suitable husband, but he would now be free to look for a nice girl from a magical family, where he would not have to keep secrets in his own house – his own bedroom, even.

He pushed that thought away immediately.

This was his family now, and nothing would change that.

Another servant appeared, taking his coat. A man with less patience might have been annoyed at the awkwardness of being helped out of his coat by a person not used to dealing with his stiff joint. Colborne, however, merely moved along with the tugging as much as he could to withdraw the uncooperative limb from the sleeve. He even managed to spare a nod of thanks for the man – really barely more than a boy, now that he thought about it.

"Pray, where can I find my lady wife?" he asked, turning towards the door leading further into the house.

"Lady Elizabeth is out for the day," he was informed. "We did not expect your arrival before tomorrow. She will be sent for, of course."

Colborne shook his head. "Let her finish what she started," he decided. "I do not require my wife to drop everything just because I returned early. I can entertain myself very well for a few hours."

Except that he wouldn't. He would spend that time mulling over his concerns about his magic, most likely. Or, barring that, practice hiding it from other family members. "Is anyone at home at all?"

"Mrs Yonge – Mrs Anne Yonge, that is – is in the sitting room, but—"

He nodded. His wife's widowed mother was a sweet, helpful person, hard-working and diligent, but with one decisive disadvantage if you were going to pay your respects: The woman was deaf, and had been since childhood, making her speech hard to understand for anyone not used to the increasingly slurred words, and rendering conversation with more than one person at a time all but impossible.

"I am sure we will manage," he declared with a certainty he did not feel. "Thank you. I know the way."

Though he had been here often, it was strange not to come as a friend or suitor this time. He hesitated in front of the door, uncertain of what the appropriate manner of approach was. Knocking was out of the question, of course.

A maid passing by recognised his predicament and gave him a smile. "Would you like me to announce you, Sir John?"

Colborne nodded gratefully. The form of address was something he would have to get used to as well. In the army, with everyone calling him either "Colonel" or "Jack", he barely remembered that he had a knighthood these days. He hoped that he wouldn't embarrass himself by not reacting to "Sir John" someday.

The woman opened the door and entered, Colborne following a few steps behind. He watched as she approached her mistress, who was deeply focused on her needlework.

At least he didn't have to berate himself for not having paid attention to how people drew Anne Yonge's attention before. He couldn’t remember any meeting with her that hadn't had a specific purpose – and her attention directed at him from the moment he entered the room.

The maid reached out to gently touch the older woman's shoulder with two fingers. The touch seemed too impossibly light to be noticed. If there hadn’t been a reaction, Colborne would have wondered if there had been contact at all.

His mother-in-law followed the maid's gestured indication, and her face lit up at seeing Colborne by the doorway.

"John," she said, her voice louder than necessary. "You're early! Come in, sit with me while we get your room ready. Mary, bring us some tea and biscuits. He must be hungry."

There was no denying that, though for a moment Colborne was confused by the other thing she had said. But of course, this was not the army, and this was not a clergyman's or a merchant's household. In a manor like this, husband and wife each had a room of their own, needing to share a bed only when it served a purpose. He might have regretted that arrangement, after seeing his friend Harry and his young wife Juana share everything, every last hardship of war, and grow ever closer by it.

Might have, if there hadn't been the matter of his magic.

As it was, he couldn't deny some relief at the reminder. One less thing to worry about in case any of his elementals thought they should share his bed.

"Did you have a good journey?" his mother-in-law asked him, her eyes intently fixed to the lower part of his face so as to determine his answer.

"Very good, thank you," he answered, catching himself just in time. There was no point in speaking louder, and he'd been told during his first visit that by trying to speak particularly clearly, he would make it more difficult, rather than easier, for her to pick up his words. "It was remarkably uneventful."

She nodded, indicating that she had understood. "How are your friends? Elizabeth showed me your letters about them – Harry and Juana, is it?"

He could tell she was making an effort at getting out the Spanish name in a somewhat recognisable fashion. Her success was limited, though the endeavour surely deserved some recognition. He would have to talk to Elizabeth about showing around his letters – though admittedly, the exploits of Harry and Juana were worth sharing, and in this particular case, handing over the letter rather than retelling was excusable.

"Sad and lonely, I fear," Colborne said. "Harry volunteered for America, and left just a few days after. Juana has accompanied his brother, Tom, back to England. They wouldn't take an extra passenger on a long voyage like that, even though she has always held her own well when we were on campaign." He shrugged. "Tom is a good enough fellow, but I am sure they are already pining for each other quite terribly."

Harry had been lucky to find a wife in Spain whom he had wasted no time falling in love with, and who was a Fire Master to boot, her powers not only equalling his but clearly surpassing them. He had never been able to ascertain whether that had been because she simply was the stronger one in magic, or because she had paid a lot more attention to her education in such matters than Harry had. He knew that Harry's sometimes haphazard ways of handling the magic could drive her up the wall – or canvas, as the case might be.

Tea was served, and Colborne realised with a sudden wave of self-consciousness that he might have done well to wash and change before paying his respects to his wife's mother to begin with. Too late for that now.

Following her gestured command to help himself to the food, he sampled both the tea and the biscuits, and took a moment to praise the cook before treating his mother-in-law to an account of some of their adventures together – edited slightly to remove the magic from them, of course.

He was almost through the story of Arthur the goose, who had ended up a guest at their Christmas dinner rather than the main course, when he heard what sounded like a startled yelp from above.

Anne Yonge stiffened almost imperceptibly at it. That must have been his imagination, Colborne decided immediately. Coming from a room above them, it had been just loud enough for him to hear and recognise. There was no way she could have perceived that sound.

A second later, it was his turn to freeze as a flurry of red burst out of the room's fireplace, launching itself across the room and at Colborne. Heat slipped into his collar and under his shirt, winding itself around his body in a manner that was as familiar to him as it was unexpected.

Schooling his features, he forced himself to sit still as he mentally fumbled for the thread of his story.

This could not be happening. There couldn't be a Salamander bursting out of the fireplace to hide in his clothing in this house. There was only one Salamander in the world that was prone to do that, and he had left him behind in France, aware that crossing the Channel with all its water was not something one could impose on a tiny little fire elemental in good conscience. He had thought the elemental in question had agreed with his reasoning.

And yet…

_Safe_ , a familiar little voice burrowed into his mind. _Friend._

Colborne couldn't help it. He closed his eyes for a moment that he needed to clear his mind. Alexander – his Alexander, his little fire elemental friend – had somehow made the journey with him against their agreement, against all the odds, and against every advice their Fire Master friends had given.

And, Colborne realised, he must have been seen by a maid upstairs and scared that brief scream out of her. He'd have to find her. He had learned that most larger households had at least some mages among the servants in Spain and France. It appeared that this was true in Britain as well. He would have to make sure of it, though. If whoever it had been was merely sensitive to the magic, who knew what she was thinking about the state of her mind now. She might never actually have seen an elemental she couldn't explain away as something else before.

Opening his eyes, he found himself looking into the intently focused stare of his mother in law.

He needed to say something, tell her something… his mind was racing, trying to come up with a suitable story.

Oh. Of course, the obvious—

"There was a scream upstairs." He surged to his feet, the reaction possibly made strange by being delayed, but it was better than nothing. Others would have heard the noise, so mentioning it would not make a difference.

"Never mind that." Her words were less clear than before, as if something was taking away her focus from enunciating. "Sit."

He dropped back into his seat. Alexander's tail tightened on his arm at the movement.

"This is certainly unexpected," Anne mused, the words sounding as if they should have been a mutter or a whisper, when they came out at the same volume as everything else.

Then, suddenly, the shine of magic invaded his vision. It wasn't any magic. One moment, his mother in law had been sitting before him, looking like nothing but an ordinary woman with grey hair going white in places. The next, he was looking at the full set of shields sparking in the many greens of Water Magic.

He may not have had his magic for very long, but he recognised a Master's shields when he saw them.

He couldn't help himself. He was staring in utter disbelief now. It took several seconds before he remembered his manners and dropped the outer-most layer of his own shielding, the one that made him look ordinary and utterly unmagical to any other mage or master until and unless he actually reached to use his magic. It was a shield he had grown so used to wearing that it took more effort to drop it than to use it.

_You are a man full of surprises, Sir John_ , a voice sounded in his head. He started. The words were impeccably pronounced and inflected, but the voice was very clearly that he had talked to since first sitting down in this room.

He inclined his head slightly. "I am not the only one, it seems," he answered, sending the words through the magic they shared. He had spoken to other masters like this before, but none of them had been of his own element, and it had always required physical contact to work.

_Don't get me wrong … but this makes things a little awkward._

"Does it?" Colborne was confused. "I would have thought the opposite."

There was a chuckle coming through their magic. _I have no idea how you managed to lead us on like this all that time…_

"I didn't," Colborne hurried to assure her. "I never knew it myself until I returned to Spain … after the wedding." He gave her a quick rundown of what had happened, packed into as few sentences as he could manage. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he had deliberately held back his power, or would have if he had been in any situation to recognise hers.

There was a magical sigh. Colborne felt confused. Something about her reaction to his suddenly found magic did not sit quite right. "What's wrong?"

_We were quite happy to see that Elizabeth's suitor was non-magical_ , Anne said with a directness that he understood was shared by many without hearing. If you had to expend extra attention on communication, he figured, you had no energy to spare on subterfuge.

_It won't matter if I tell you,_ she went on. _You will find out soon enough anyway._

He raised an eyebrow in question.

_It was several years ago. There was a young Master – a very gallant man, handsome, polite, charming. Elizabeth fell for him, like many of the young girls. Except that in her case all signs pointed to him reciprocating._

She paused, and he nodded, indicating for her to go on, though he thought he might already know where this story went. He had heard too many that worked along similar lines, though mostly the gallant young gentleman in question would have been one of his soldiers.

_He made her promises that he had no intention of keeping, and she had no reason to doubt. Eventually, he had what he wanted. Then he left._

"Dishonourable," Colborne said. "But I don't see how this is affected by my magic." Unless Elizabeth had sworn never to look at another Master again or something along those lines. That would, indeed, make things somewhat awkward.

_If you were what you seemed to be_ , Anne elaborated. _You would never have had to know. A small glamour during the first night, and you would never have been the wiser._

Ah, but as he was now, he would, of course, have seen the glamour, and seen through it.

He should have been angry at hearing that they had been planning to trick him, but he found that he didn't have it in him. He had seen too many girls tricked into believing a young gentleman's promises and suffering the disgrace for it. He would not blame anyone for it. Least of all his wife.

"A glamour will not be necessary," he said instead, his voice level, both out loud and through the magic. "I have not had the pleasure before, so how would I ever tell the difference?"

That was surely not the kind of confession one usually made towards one's mother in law, but this was generally not the kind of conversation one usually had with one's mother in law to begin with. He was certain of that, in spite of his limited experience with mothers in law to date.

She was shaking her head slightly, a ghost of a smile tugging on her lips.

_You, Master, are an extraordinary man._

He shrugged. "Just a Water Master with—oh." He sent a silent thread of magic Alexander's way to coax the Salamander out of his shirt.

A red nose appeared over the edge of his collar, sniffing, the forked tongue shooting out to taste the air.

"With slightly unusual friends, I fear. Is anyone here going to have a fit upon seeing a pair of feral Phoenixes fly in? If so, we would do well to warn them."


End file.
